Washington State thoughtfully rejected Arne Duncan’s threat to cancel its waiver from the absurd demands of No Child Left Behind. The decision to say no to federal demands and intimidation was bipartisan.

The Legislature refused to bend to Duncan’s insistence that the state adopt test-based evaluation, which has consistently failed across the nation and has been declared inaccurate by the nation’s leading scholarly organizations.

The Washington State legislature understands federalism. Secretary Duncan does not. He thinks he is charge of the nation’s schools–every one f them. As someone who spent eight years running the Chicago public school system, one of the nation’s lowest-performing, he should have earned humility. Unfortunately, he enjoys a sense of certainty that is astonishing, almost as astonishing as his indifference to research and evidence.